The presentation of products for consumer purchase, particularly in a retail environment, has long been the focus of attention. With the ever-increasing number and variety of products offered, both manufacturers and retailers strive to both present their products in an attractive manner while at the same time best utilizing the fixed amount of space available. A conventional apparatus for the display of products is a peg board system, in which vertically-extending panels of peg board, typically having a matrix of holes arrayed thereacross, are mounted to walls, partitions, or other vertical structures. A variety of fixtures have been developed to be mounted to the peg boards, the fixtures in turn being adapted to display a wide variety of products in a variety of manners. Such fixtures include simple hook and brackets, as well as shelves, bins and other constructions particularly adapted for the presentation of particular products.
While ubiquitous, peg board display systems suffer from several disadvantages. The peg board sheets themselves, typically formed of a pressboard or similar material, can be subject to warpage. This can make it difficult to mount large size fixtures thereon. In addition, adjacent sheets often are not precisely aligned with each other, thus limiting the ability of the associated fixtures to span the seam between fixtures, as the mounting holes often do not align sufficiently precisely to accept the fixturing. In addition, the adjacent edges of panels are often provided with filler or molding strips, which themselves stand outwardly from the plane of the panels and prevent the bridging of panels by fixtures. Further, the nature of peg board constructions require a pivoting action of a fixture for fixture insertion or removal. This makes the replacement of a particular fixture in a completed display more difficult, often necessitating the complete removal of a display array to allow repositioning of an individual fixture unit. Similar problems and constraints exist with respect to other known display systems, such as slot wall and uni-wall based systems.
It is accordingly a purpose of the present invention to provide a fixture system which avoids the disadvantages of prior art peg board and slot wall-based units.
It is a further purpose of the present invention to provide a fixturing system which includes both a mounting or backboard and individual fixturing elements which can be utilized together to provide a display system of increased strength and rigidity, as well as flexibility.
It is a further purpose of the present invention to provide such a fixturing system in which the individual fixtures, by use of appropriate adapters, can be used with conventional prior art-type systems.
Yet a further purpose of the present invention is to provide a backboard system of improved rigidity and flatness, and a system in which the backboards can be mounted in an overlying manner to a pegboard, slotwall, or uniweb wall surface, as well as directly upon a wall.
Still another purpose of the present invention is to provide a fixturing system that offers increased efficiency of installation and shipping/storage of its components.